


Adrift

by yunmin



Category: Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 19:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7521076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunmin/pseuds/yunmin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia sits on the cold plastic chair outside medical, knees drawn to her chin, fingers clinging to her shins. It’s been three hours since they landed; three hours since Luke was rushed into surgery and Leia deposited herself here and refused to move. Command took one look at her and Lando and Chewie and decided to leave her be, and get the story out of the scoundrel and the wookiee instead.</p>
<p>Then Wedge shows up, fresh off patrol, wanting to know what happened to Luke, and Leia realises that she doesn't know what to tell him.</p>
<p>She doesn't know anything anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adrift

**Author's Note:**

> This owes a debt to a couple of fics: the opening scene of [saudade](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2239203), and [Vaccum](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6421753), both of which play with similar concepts, and [this lovely piece of meta about Leia and ships](http://weary-hearted-queen.tumblr.com/post/109597287316/20-things-about-leia-organa-and-ships), which really solidified how much I loved Wedge and Leia as friends.
> 
> As always, I am up for discussion on [tumblr](http://drinkupthesunrise.tumblr.com), which is especially useful if you want to yell at me about all the fics I said I'd write and haven't posted yet, I'm sorry.

Leia sits on the cold plastic chair outside medical, knees drawn to her chin, fingers clinging to her shins. It’s been three hours since they landed; three hours since Luke was rushed into surgery and Leia deposited herself here and refused to move. Command took one look at her and Lando and Chewie and decided to leave her be, and get the story out of the scoundrel and the wookiee instead.

She still has Luke’s blood on her sleeve cuff, Han’s sweat on her hands. She’s playing the last seventy-two hours back in her head on a loop – Han being wrenched from her, Vader standing over them, Luke collapsing onto her, being terrified that they weren’t going to get out of it alive.

“Where is he? I need to see him, he’s my friend—”

A brash corellian voice cuts straight through Leia’s thoughts as clear as day and for a moment she dares to hope. That it could be _Han_ , miraculously out of the carbonite, ignoring all sense of protocol and decorum to march in to see Luke – which he would, of course, it’s hardly the first time he’s done it. She imagines the way he’d look, swaggering in, catching sight of Leia and asking: “Did you miss me, Princess?” And right now Leia would fling herself on him, fist her hands in his shirt and pull him close and weep tears of joy and tell him that _of course_ she did, much as she hates admitting he’s right.

“Calm down, Captain Antilles. He’s in surgery. I can let you know when he’s out,” the medical officer replies.

It isn’t Han.

It couldn’t be after all. He’s gone, captured by the Empire, taken by Boba Fett to Jabba, in payment of debts that he’s always told Leia he’s got to pay. She’s always ignored him, thinking that no debt could be of greater need than his service to the Rebellion. Turns out she was wrong.

“Leia!”

Leia turns her head to see Wedge Antilles attempting to make his way past the medical officer. For a moment, she’s thankful that he doesn’t call her princess, because she’s not sure she could handle it being yelled at her across a Rebellion ship in the accent he shares with Han right now. Thankfully, that is the only thing Han and Wedge have in common. Wedge is still wearing his flightsuit, eye-searing bright orange, life-support box still on his chest. He must have come straight from his patrol once he heard. And he’s too short; Luke’s height, not Han’s. His hair is a similar length, but it’s darker, and falls differently. His face is longer, nose sharper, eyebrows thicker…

Wedge Antilles is not Han Solo, in short.

“Let him through,” she says, quietly. “It’s okay,” she reassures the officer, who is still holding Wedge back.

The officer still looks uncertain, sending her a concerned look, but he lets Wedge through. Wedge walks over to her side, with a calmness that Leia admires because it’s beyond what she’s capable of mustering right now. He takes the seat beside her, taking care to leave enough space between them that Leia doesn’t feel like she’s being crowded.

He lets her sit in silence for a moment, waiting to know if she will talk of her own volition. When she doesn’t, he asks: “What happened?” Then immediately, as if realising how difficult that question would be to answer, how much it would entail, he adds, “To Luke, I mean. You don’t have to tell me anything else if you don’t want to. Though—” he says, slightly hesitant, “if you want someone to talk to, I can listen.”

Leia appreciates his steadiness. She’s always appreciated it, not that she’s ever had the chance to mention it to him before. In a world of hot-shot pilots and jedi knights and sith lords and treacherous hutts and bounty hunters, Wedge Antilles is a singular constant beacon of shining light. As everyone else she knows falls away, he is there exactly as she left him. “Luke lost his hand,” she starts with, unsure of what he knows. “It was a clean cut. The flesh was seared closed. It looked like a lightsaber blade,” she says, quietly, because that narrows the culprits down to approximately one. “They think he’ll be fine – he’s a good candidate for a prosthesis already – but they wanted to get in there immediately. He was in shock, too,” she adds. “Something awful happened to him in there.”

Wedge nods. “I figured he’d got caught up in something after he didn’t make the rendezvous.”

There’s a concern in his tone that betrays the truth: that he’d believed that because the alternative was to think Luke _dead_ , and that was unthinkable.

“He came to us on Bespin, even though he shouldn’t have—” Leia starts then stops, realising that this is not where to start the story. She barely knows where to begin. She flicks her glance over to Wedge, whose brow is furrowed in confusion.

“You mean he wasn’t…” Wedge trails off. Leia suddenly knows that he thought Luke was with her and Han, all those missing months, and is only just concluding that there is more to this story.

“I don’t know,” Leia says, because she doesn’t. That is Luke’s story to tell, not hers, and unlike Han he will be able to tell it to Wedge, once he wakes up.

A gulf of silence stretches between them. Leia holds herself tighter, fingertips clawing at the seams of her trousers. Wedge rocks the balls of his feet up and down, then starts kicking his legs back and forth.

“Congratulations on the promotion,” Leia says, remembering that the medical officer had called him captain.

“It’s just a brevet,” Wedge says. “Though I guess with Luke injured they might make it a full promotion.”

Oh – of course, he’d only got it because Luke was gone. The Rogues would have needed a commander – that’s what she had said to him, wasn’t it, back on Hoth, when she’d stopped him hopping into a speeder and tearing off in search of Luke. She regrets that, partially, because now she knows how he feels. Duty says she must stay here, with the Alliance, with Luke, but all she wants is to get into a ship and fly across the galaxy in search of the man she loves.

(she remembers too, the expression on his face when he’d been handed his last promotion four years ago in the hours after the destruction of the death star. The poor man must be sick of having his career advanced by the death of his comrades.)

“You deserve it,” she says.

Wedge looks uncomfortable with the praise.

“You do,” she insists, stupidly, because she feels so twisted up and _ugly_ inside that she needs to lavish praise on someone else, needs someone to know that they are worthy and valued and good, needs to know that good is still capable of existing in this awful treacherous galaxy. “You’re one of the best men I know, Wedge Antilles, and you deserve this good thing, and you don’t deserve any of the bad things that have happened to you—”

And force there have been a lot; losing his parents, losing his mentor, losing his entire squadron, losing Luke: the man is a walking tragedy and yet he still manages to stand tall.

“Neither do you,” Wedge says, leaning over to prise one of her hands free. He holds it loose for a moment, giving her a chance to pull away, then laces his fingers through hers and holds tight. His hands are warm. Calloused, like Luke and Han’s _(like a pilot_ _’s)_ , but smaller than Han’s. His fingers are thinner, more delicate. “I heard about Han.”

Leia nods, because if she opens her mouth she’s afraid that no sound will come out other than a choked sob and she can’t do that, not _here_ , not when she’s waiting on Luke.

“I don’t really know what happened, exactly, I didn’t stick around to listen,” Wedge says, and at this point he seems to be talking just so she can have a voice to listen and concentrate on. “I was too concerned about Luke. But I know he isn’t dead, and if he isn’t dead that means he can come back to us, and that means we are going to get him back. No ifs, no buts. We don’t leave one of our own behind.”

He sounds _so_ forceful about it, so determined and certain that it will happen. And his tone makes Leia believe that he will make it happen, that Wedge Antilles will move stars and the sea and the sky itself just to give her this small bit of happiness.

She’s not sure what she did to deserve that. Her mouth drops open, and there it is, the sob, choked and ugly and raw emerging from her throat. She blinks, and her eyes are wet, and there are tears streaming down her cheeks. Suddenly there is an arm around her, pulling her close, and she just lets it, resting her head on the shoulder she finds and clutches at orange fabric. She hasn’t cried like this since – since Alderaan, and that had been in private, weeks after it had happened, when the reality had finally hit that there was never again going to be a smuggled message from her parents for her, that there was _nothing_ more of them left for her to receive. She’s never done this before. Not in front of someone.

Wedge, to his credit, doesn’t say anything, just lets her finish in her own time. His hand rubs reassuring circles into her arm, just enough pressure to let her know that he’s there and alive and he’s listening, if she ever wants to say anything.

Leia’s not sure how long she sits there, weeping on Wedge Antilles’ shoulder. It’s long enough. Eventually, she pulls herself off him, releases the fabric she’d been clutching so tight. Wipes the trails of tears that have fallen down her face. “It’s okay, I think my flightsuit bore the brunt of that damage,” Wedge says, with a lighter tone. He gestures to the dark wet patch on his shoulder, that extends part of the way down his chest, but accompanies it with such a grin that Leia can’t help but twitch her lips into a smile.

“Senator-Princess Organa, Captain Antilles.” The medical officer approaches, and Leia hopes that he didn’t see too much of her display. “Commander Skywalker is out of surgery. It went well,” he adds, as both of them have equal looks of concern. “Medical are willing to let one of you see him briefly before he is fully sedated for rest.”

Leia looks to Wedge, who tells her: “Go, it should be you,” before she even has time to think about arguing why it should be her.

“Are you sure?” she asks quickly. He and Luke were – _are?_ – lovers, she knows that much, by all rights it should be him in that room sitting by his side and not her.

But he recognises that, while he might want to see Luke (and he does, she doesn’t doubt that, it’s in his bones, in the way he stands), Leia needs to see him. Needs to see that he hasn’t disappeared or been taken out from under her, spirited away like a dream in a long night.“Yes,” he replies, absolutely certain. “Go. I’ll be here waiting when you get back, and then we’ll get you some food and a hot shower and some sleep, because I don’t want to know how long it’s been since you got some of that, and I’ll get the rotation of Rogues currently looking in on Hobbie to tell us if there are any updates—” and Leia stops listening to Wedge as the medical officer ushers her away and into Luke’s room.

He’ll be there when she returns.

For now, that’s enough.


End file.
